Romano Mazzoli obit

Former US Representative Romano Mazzoli of Louisville dies

 

He was not on the list.

Romano L. Mazzoli, whose tenacity and personal integrity formed the foundation of a long career in politics and public service, died Tuesday at his home in Louisville. He was one day shy of his 90th birthday.

Charlie Mattingly, his former chief of staff, said Mazzoli's mental acuity never waned, although his health declined, particularly in recent months.

Through out his 24 years in the House, Mazzoli defied the usual stereotypical descriptions applied to political figures. He was, very much, his own man.

In 1988, Courier Journal Washington Bureau Chief Mike Brown wrote of Mazzoli, “Intense, conscientious, almost painfully honest, Mazzoli is a lawmaker who thinks and acts on his own. In a city where arm-twisting and horse-trading are the major medium of exchange, this cerebral 55-year old son of an Italian immigrant is something of an anomaly: a politician who sets his course by internal compass seemingly without fear of where he would end up.”

His unpredictable voting patterns occasionally prompted the casual observer describe him as a maverick, a term Mazzoli disliked.

“I don’t like labels,” he said in 1988. “I don’t consider myself anything but thoughtful.”

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Mazzoli’s nature frequently put him in conflict with his party on issues of substance and matters of conscience.

Although he pledged in his first House speech to support the Equal Rights Amendment, he alienated women’s groups that were trying to keep the amendment alive in 1983 by voting to defeat an ERA resolution. He said Democratic leaders had not provided enough time to discuss its impact on abortion and women in the draft.

A devout Catholic, Mazzoli strongly opposed abortion, putting him at odds with members of his party’s liberal Washington establishment who made abortion rights an article of faith.

He frequently angered organized labor by refusing to support protectionist legislation and voted once to support the veto of a Democratic bill to raise the minimum wage.

In 1984, he voted with the Republicans in the House when the Democratic majority seated Rep. Frank McCloskey of Indiana after a contested election.

When powerful lawmakers were found operating outside the rules, Mazzoli would go to the House floor to condemn them, as he did when he called for the resignation of Rep. Wayne Hays, a powerful Ohio Democrat who put his mistress on his office payroll.

He made no pretense about his distaste for trying to land congressional pork and he was best known in Congress for his work on the thankless immigration issue.

In 1986, working alongside Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, of Wyoming, he helped push through the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which 36 year's later remains the last significant immigration reform legislation to pass Congress.

"What a dear man. What a great human being," Simpson, 91, said in an interview, his voice breaking with emotion. "I trusted him implicitly,

Simpson the two men worked closely together with the immigration bill and developed a close relationship that lasted through the end of Mazzoli's life. "There was a beauty to him, a sincerity to him," said Simpson. "He was real, there was nothing inauthentic about him."

Despite that, Simpson said their friend vexed many in their own parties.

"I would get in trouble with Republicans because I was working with him and he would get in trouble with the Democrats because he was working with me," he said.

Because he was out of step with the liberal Democrats who controlled the Judiciary Committee, Mazzoli was, for a time, stripped of the chairmanship of the immigration subcommittee — his only leadership position in the House.

Toward the end of his career, Mazzoli refused to take contributions from political action committees and took no contribution from anyone of more than $100.

When he retired in 1994, he said he would not be remembered for his legislation but for helping to raise public confidence in government.

U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth said Tuesday that when faced with tough ethical questions in Washington, he would ask himself, "What would Ron do? ..."

"His attitude about raising money was one thing." Yarmuth said. "He basically said, 'I’m not going to get into that money raising battle because it could compromise, or create the impression that his vote could be compromised."

Norm Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., tweeted after learning of Mazzoli's death, "A lovely man and a superb legislator, who knew how to forge compromises and worked to make a better America. He did Kentucky proud."

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer took to Twitter to call Mazzoli a "giant of American politics" and said he inspired Fischer to run for public office. "His selfless manner of working for the people, his indomitable work ethic and his devotion to his wife Helen were models for what we all aspire to be, not just as public servants, but as human beings."

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also expressed his condolences, calling Mazzoli a "distinguished public servant and proud Louisvillian" who "made a lasting and respectable impact on our country during his 24 years of service."

Romano Louis Mazzoli was born Nov. 2, 1932, in Louisville to Romano and Mary Iopollo Mazzoli. He graduated from St. Xavier High School, where he was the state high school tennis doubles champion in 1953. He graduated with honors from Notre Dame and the University of Louisville, where he earned his law degree. He also served two years in the Army.

He married the former Helen Dillon in 1959.

Mazzoli launched his political career in 1967 with a little-noticed campaign for the state Senate run from the basement of his modest home a few blocks from St. X.

Through hard work and the help of a few friends, Mazzoli knocked off the anointed candidate of the Democratic organization in the primary and in November won the job of representing the city’s East End in Frankfort.

Mazzoli immediately showed his independence with a floor speech that questioned the propriety of legislators accepting tickets to basketball games at the state universities whose budgets they wrote. At the session’s end, the Frankfort press corps named him the Senate’s outstanding freshman member.

In 1969, he launched what seemed to be a hopeless campaign for the party’s mayoral nomination. Again, running on a shoestring, Mazzoli came with 1,500 votes of the nomination. Although he finished third behind Frank Burke, who went on to become mayor, and Aldermanic President James Thornberry, Mazzoli’s showing firmly established his presence in the party.

His next target was Kentucky’s 3rd District seat in Congress that was held by a popular Republican, William O. Cowger, who won the post after a successful term as mayor. The race turned out to be the closest in the nation in 1970 with Mazzoli winning by 211 votes and withstanding a court challenge.

The Vietnam War was a major issue in the 1970 campaign, with Mazzoli urging an end to American involvement. His opposition to the war suggested that he was a traditional Democratic liberal, which was hardly the case. But long after his election, Mazzoli’s voting record, when viewed against the background of a campaign dominated by Vietnam politics, was a source of consternation to traditional Democratic constituencies such as women and organized labor.

But for more than a decade, Mazzoli never had a serious Republican challenge. Cowger died before he could try to reclaim the seat, and Mazzoli faced only an occasionally serious threat from within his party, such as the primary challenge of Jim Lawrence, an alderman from Louisville’s South End, in a 1976 campaign heated by the school-busing issue.

By the mid 1980s, significant elements of organized labor and the women’s movement had become sufficiently alienated from Mazzoli that they were looking for candidates to run against him.

In 1988, Jeffrey Hutter, a former television reporter and Humana, Inc. official running with the support of labor and women, got nearly 40 percent of the primary vote. Two years later, in a three-way race, Mazzoli defeated Hutter by 45 percent to 32 percent with Paul Bather, a Black alderman, getting 22 percent.

Mazzoli’s toughest race was his last. When he won the 3rd District seat in 1970, the community’s most consistently Republican part in Eastern Jefferson County where in the neighboring 4th District.

But after the 1990 census, those neighborhoods were restored to the 3rd, giving an aggressive Republican a shot at a Democrat. The Republican turned out to be Susan Stokes, whose pro-choice views attracted support from a number of Democrats.

By then, Mazzoli had stopped taking money from PACs and had put the $100 cap on individual contributions. In effect, he was living off the political capitol he had built up in his more than 20 years in Congress.

He won comfortably — a six-point margin, or nearly 16,000 votes. But that was his last race.

He and his wife Helen returned to Louisville in 1995, the year the Republicans took control of Congress.

Mazzoli practiced law with the firm of Stites & Harbison.

He continued to be active in politics for years after that, often attending political events around town.

Yarmuth said he stayed in touch with Mazzoli but that after Helen Mazzoli, his wife of 52 years, died in 2012, he stopped accepting lunch invitations.

"Ever since his wife died, he kind of went out of circulation," Yarmuth said.

"When Helen died, something died inside him," said Simpson.

Mattingly said in recent years, Mazzoli's health declined, particularly in recent months as he lost his mobility and became more frail.

He said Mazzoli stayed home throughout his declining heath with the help of home health care. He went into hospice care over the weekend and received last rites on Monday.

He is survived by his two children, Michael and Andrea, and four grandchildren.

Simpson said he'll miss old friend. "The Shoshones ... have a saying: 'My heart is on the ground,'" Simpson said. "Well, my heart is on the ground."